Whisper
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: When fate fails him, he turns to purpose. Zack-centric.


Disclaimer: FFVII isn't mine. This is pure speculation on my part.

* * *

All in all, death's a flash, then bang! The light swoops in and allows him little else. Each tug is a tear dropped from green eyes wide awake to his departure. It tickles a bit, makes him smile when he realizes how much she's thought of him. Closing his eyes, seeing her for the first time in years, pink dress!, he's tempted to stay a while. Kinda make sure she gets back on track and dries those eyes before she ends up solid, glassed over from numbing grief.

He wishes he could tell her that death's not so bad. The dying part's a bitch but the end of the journey unwinds him free of tension and turmoil. The stars look a lot more real and if he wanted to, he'd reach in, pluck one and toss it down to the planet in case she hasn't noticed. That's all it'll take and then he can sit down, play catch up with Angeal, maybe send another for Cloud if the kid needs it.

So, in the end, he's warm and cozy wherever he lands, hasn't opened his eyes yet in case he's missed a giggle from behind her palm where she's hiding or a gleam he's overlooked when he was alive and thankless for the little things in his short life. Green glimmers, a rainbow swells from the pool of her eye but the sob erupts instead of the dulcet thrill he'd grown to love with the flowers at her feet.

Even though he oughta be _sorta_ happy for the moment, he's never quite forgotten that laugh.

* * *

He's learnt fast not to waste too much time in the Lifestream. Cloud's finally hobbling alone, quiet as ever. Just not the comfortable awkwardness that they'd smiled about when life was a game, only a matter of getting to the end with a collection of assorted bruises, smashed noses and some damned fine stories to tell the kids one day.

The kid he'd once joked about humps and hickies with was a man too soon before he knew how to be.

Cloud settles the blade across his back, frighteningly unaware of its weight. Unused to it, Zack concludes. Already a soldier trying to be hero trying to be somebody he knew. When Zack calls out his true name, it comes out gargled in a growl, as if it's actually fact that he's fading into Cloud, carved into the wall of scars that cuts off his mind from his heart.

It's here that Zack learns that there's more than one way to die. Losing out to a memory, letting yourself down in the wake of another, allowing it to consume you until you were no more real than those lost ideals of your youth…

It's times like these – with him, with Aerith wandering about alone at night when she can't find anything else to take her mind off that day – that Zack wishes he could learn how to get this right at least. Let them learn from their own mistakes. Let hardship shape them.

Just let go.

* * *

When he can't get anything right at all, he flows.

Angeal remains steady, still hovering over in case he needs a reminder. One exhale and Zack's out in the cold, streaming unseen, unfelt through the dirt and scum of the slums. Kids stare right through him without knowing his eyes dim with remorse from the tick-bites on their sickly bodies. Adults are worse; they just focus right up to the sky, expecting some sort of mythical salvation to break apart the blue and bless them with release from their prisons, physical or worse.

Looking at them, watching them raise their hands to the wrong gods, he _really_ feels like shit.

Because that's what he'd once taught her. To believe in the illusionary, to worship her wanderings wherever they'd take her.

He'd cry, except that it's not gonna bring him a hug anymore. Angeal's got a kind heart that still beats from a broken body but his hands are rough, used and an unwelcoming source of comfort. If it didn't hurt her so much to feel his presence stifling the calm at the church, he would've known where else to turn to.

Zack's standing beside a man who cannot feel him as well, who cannot offer any consolation from a heart that bleeds over a family he's lost. The man is tall, burly, could have made great use of those limbs had the muscles not given way to knotted skin and wasted bone. He's feels so lost that Angeal's calloused hand on his shoulder is but the slightest brush of tired skin.

"You can't save everyone."

* * *

Shinra swells and bursts of its own accord.

The attack goes as planned. Except that Cloud's hanging off a ledge that's not an allegory.

Zack likes to think that he believes in purpose after all. Creeping through noxious fumes, creaking pieces of metal scattering sparks across the floor, that cute guide-girl Tifa reaching out desperately to pull the blond back up to safety…

She shouldn't worry. He knows what he's doing.

Down below, Aerith's alone in her little world. She's still learning to get past the mourning period which has dragged on longer than he'd liked for her. She could use some company.

He inhales, not breathing. But he can sense what he's about to do. Its implications and overtures.

He knows what he's doing.

_You know what you're doing?_

_I know what I'm doing._

Zack leans forward, glances briefly into torrid blue eyes that do not quite reflect his and pushes Cloud off the Sector Five reactor base. For a second, he could have sworn the boy's recognized what he was up to.

Cloud fades into the slums beneath him, a piercing cry from Tifa seems to have been swallowed up by the noise of machinery breaking around them, a shard of memory replays in his mind, making him smile for the first time in ages.

Aerith will understand.

He can go now.


End file.
